RAD in adults?

Hey guys, my therapist brought up RAD a few times recently. I'm 31 years old, though, and everything I can find on it tells me this is a childhood disorder. I can't find an adult criteria for RAD. I never had psychiatric intervention as a child and as an adult have been briefly diagnosed ASPD, which quickly changed to BPD, and my current therapist agrees with me both were misdiagnosed. I've spent 10 years looking for answers and an appropriate course of therapy. I went into therapy this time looking for a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

What does RAD become as an adult, if left untreated in children? I've googled criteria and tests, and can only find checklists for infant or child/teens. I did find this test and answered yes to 17 questions. I'll bring it up to my therapist but in the mean time, is this something you can even diagnose in adults? From what I understand you can't.

So what kind of diagnosis would I be looking at if that's the case? "Well, technically you're too old now to diagnose so that means nothing is wrong" isn't going to be sufficient. What does RAD develop into if left untreated?

Probably depends on how much that person develops into an adult--socially/psychologically speaking. I'm 28 male, I've known about my personality issues for some time, and I did a bunch of reading on this stuff a while ago but a therapist is out of my price range and I just...forgot about it or put it out of my mind for a long time. I mean I could pay a therapist but it takes me months to save a thousand dollars. Maybe it would be well spent, perhaps you can offer insight on that. I know that the financial thing is partly a copout as I don't want to confront this stuff. I have $300 on my benefits plan and I'll have the same next year. Sessions appear to be around $130--how many sessions are usually required?

I guess I forgot how textbook I was in some ways. I've been smoking a lot of weed in the last... eight years? Gosh. Pretty much disassociating myself in my free time to ease mental pain/anxiety. Smoking weed and watching youtube, getting up and going to work. over and over for years. Never had a proper diagnosis or any therapy. This will read partly like an introduction of myself and partly some insight into how I behave. Stream of consciousness. I might not be a perfect witness. I hope this is an okay place to do this since the board is so slow.

I slowly stopped socializing, I've switched jobs a lot in my twenties which doesn't help. Not super happy where I work, a means to an end. I abhor commitment and loyalty. Too dangerous. I'm chronically self-reliant. My current job is my longest, three years and I'm currently attending the training portion of my apprenticeship--a good time to reevaluate, sober up, and get away from the stress of the workplace(this is why I'm posting here, now). I guess I like the challenge in this field and I generally like my coworkers, despite having little in common with them(I was a book smart arts student and they're hockey-watching truck driving tradesmen).

I was idealistic in my younger twenties and wanted to be a musician and all my friends that thrived were supported well by their parents. Should have been an engineer probably. I moved cities and had to pay rent. No romance, effectively no sex(one meaningless hookup in my twenties). No shortage of opportunity. Serial tendency to get close to people for validation but never romance or anything really trust related. Superficially pleasant and unusually kind and charitable for no apparent reason at certain times. Superficial is a good way to describe my relationships socially. I only have a mother and brother for immediate family and my brother moved away at 18 and my mother was a wreck--alcoholism, eating disorder, rough divorce from my alcoholic father when I was a kid after an incident that got child services involved. She was troubled with mental illness as a child from bullying. My grandma says my father wasn't a very good guy either. They were ordered to go to rehab or they would lose custody, my father refused, thus divorce. I was in early grade school, grade 2-4 somewhere. My grandmother was the only one that remained(remains) healthy. I moved away at 17 to study music. No leadership role in my formative years really. This past year I had a rough year due to substance abuse, stress at work, and indecision with my family. Had panic attacks at work, decided to cut my family out entirely. This is still the case. No more panic attacks though. I live in a different city so it wasn't hard to cut them out.

I have resentment towards my brother for moving away and not taking a leadership role in the family. We were never close, he was abusive when I was a kid. Never told him I resent him either. My mother relapsed into drinking when I was at school. This sucked in retrospect. I really needed support at this time and worked a variety of retail jobs in my twenties just treading water. Uncles are busy, we were never close, no one to give me life advice which was terrible. Later, maybe a couple years ago, my brother cut her out of his life to try to get her to sober up I guess. My memory is foggy here--I think I stopped talking to him because I thought this was careless. She sobered up, but she still didn't take care of herself, looked homeless, and has an eating disorder she won't acknowledge. The alcohol has taken a toll on her brain as well. I then felt that this whole situation was deeply dysfunctional and stopped talking to either of them. I couldn't stand keeping in touch with my grandmother so despite her innocence in this situation I cut her out too. It hurts to say it and sounds terrible but I felt that trying to forget all of this was better than continually opening this wound when I spoke to my grandmother, who wants nothing more than for all of us to be close. And I was desperate to move on and try to live a normal life, which of course was no panacea and is still a challenge. So there's the context of my situation.

I lean on my coworkers for psychological validation but I don't return the favor. No socialization outside of work with my coworkers or otherwise. I don't discuss my personal life with them, and I have no interest in theirs. I don't have a personal life anyway.

I had some pretty violent outbursts as a kid but never directed at people. Once directed at animals. Definitely not proud of that. The only reason I didn't is from being abused by my brother as a kid I think. Insecurity and anxiety. No more violent tendencies now but I do have a short fuse and I worry about being able to control myself if something were to set me off. Since I'm physically more healthy I have more energy and I'm pretty strong so I see it as a liability. I do not resolve conflict well and I hold grudges. I do not have good relationships with my managers, they keep me around because I'm an excellent worker and they probably know I have some mental baggage by now. One of my managers is excellent and a good leader but he is not involved in the shop anymore. He has been continually nice to me. I appreciated this but eventually I found a way to dislike this treatment as it seemed forced, despite that it was probably entirely sincere. It's like I have these crazy expectations and even if they're fulfilled I can then hold it against this other person because they "folded" or something. Very unhealthy. I am extremely sensitive to what I perceive as a lack of guidance/direction. As an apprentice I occasionally run into situations I can't resolve and I quickly feel anxious, panicked and angry that I am being subjected to this experience. Loyalty is not even a consideration and I feel left out to dry regularly. I feel "special", since I am an excellent technician and I expect a higher level of training, involvement and deference to my expectations. That is not something I usually acknowledge but I see it in myself.

I do have some good attributes! I know I have potential! There is a boy I'm interested in at school who has shown a lot of patience with my selfish and inconsistent behaviour and I think that is giving me reason to sort this out. The one thing that short-circuits my uncanny ability to push people away is when people see through my provocation and deliver unyielding empathy. As much as it may be cliche the "it's not your fault" scene in good will hunting would be the type of thing to break me.

Sounds like you know more about this stuff than me, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences, and sorry for the walls of text. I really can't isolate what's screwed me or what it relevant to the conversation.

My personal goals(if I may)
get closure somehow
learn to become more balanced, forgiving, reasonable and generally less conflicted
stay mentally and physically healthy

Thanks for listening

I also found a website that lists possible criteria, I would say nearly all of these apply to me, with the exception that I don't experience much depression or suicidal thoughts.

http://www.attachmenttherapy.com/adult.htm

Adult Attachment Disorder & Treatment


Unresolved childhood attachment issues leave an adult vulnerable to difficulties in forming secure adult relationships. Patterns of attachment continue through the life cycle and across generations. New relations are affected by the expectations developed in past relationships. There is a strong correlation between insecure adult attachment and marital dissatisfaction and negative marital interactions. If an adult does not feel safe with others, he/she will tend to be either rejecting of their partner or overly clingy.

Attachment problems are often handed down transgenerationally unless someone breaks the chain. As a parent, an insecurely attached adult may lack the ability to form a strong attachment to their child and provide the necessary attachment cues required for the healthy emotional development of the child thereby predisposing their child to a lifetime of relationship difficulties.

Depending on the genetic personality style of the individual and the early life events experienced, insecurely attached adults fall in one of two categories of insecure attachment:

AVOIDANT

Intense anger and loss
Hostile
Critical of others
Sensitive to blame
Lack of empathy
Views others as untrustworthy
Views others as undependable
Views self as unlovable or "too good" for others
Relationships feel either threatening to one's sense of control, not worth the effort, or both
Compulsive self-reliance
Passive withdrawal
Low levels of perceived support
Difficulty getting along with co-workers, often preferring to work alone
Work may provide a good excuse to avoid personal relations
Fear of closeness in relationships
Avoidance of intimacy
Unlikely to idealize the love relationship
Tendency toward Introjective depression (self critical)
ANXIOUS/AMBIVALENT

Compulsive Caregiving
Feel overinvolved and underappreciated
Rapid relationship breakups
Idealizing of others
Strong desire for partner to reciprocate in relationship
Desire for extensive contact and declarations of affections
Overinvests his/her emotions in a relationship
Perceives relationships as imbalanced
Relationship is idealized
Preoccupation with relationship
Dependence on relationship
Heavy reliance on partner
Views partner as desirable but unpredictable (sometimes available, sometimes not)
Perceives others as difficult to understand
Relationship is primary method by which one can experience a sense of security
Unlikely to view others as altruistic
Sensitive to rejection
Discomfort with anger
Extreme emotions
Jealous
Possessive
Views self as unlovable
Suicide attempts
Mood swings
Tendency toward anaclitic depression (dependent depression)
GOALS OF THERAPY
Identify early losses
Mourn the loss of that which never was but yearned for deeply
Provide closure to the unresolved relationship longings with parental attachment figures
Reorganize belief system and physiological reaction to attachment relationships

Hey, man, thanks for the reply. I've gone over RAD in therapy and my therapist is interested in discussing it further. However today I received an official diagnosis if narcissistic personality disorder, which to me seems like a logical conclusion to untreated childhood RAD.

That's good. Sorry about the wall of text, I was in an agitated state and didn't realize how much I wrote.

Could you tell me a bit about therapy and how productive it's been/how many sessions you've had? I'm a little worried about the cost but I can tell I can't deal with this stuff by myself.

Normally my therapist charges $80/hour, but they also have a sliding scale and I was thoroughly surprised to see I qualify for reduced cost therapy ($30 to be precise, which is my copay). I have to reapply every 6 weeks, though.

I'm mostly there to work on behaviors. Anger management, getting along better and being more mindful of my husband and daughter. We've identified a lot of anger/rage triggers that cause me problems, working on communicating better instead of internalizing things because I don't have anything nice to say and don't want to get fired or start a fight at home.

I think RAD is way more treatable than NPD, which is generally regarded as incurable. When we were discussing RAD I started doing some research, though, and discovered "attachment therapy". Apparently it works for some people, but it sounded utterly revolting to me. A bunch of hugs, rainbows, kisses, and love crammed down your throat. I'll pass lol. It sounds like something that would do far more harm than good in an uncooperative client. NPD shares similar aversions to intimacy with RAD and attachment therapy sounds repulsive and offensive. We discussed it briefly in therapy and I put the idea down pretty swiftly, like, it won't happen, period.

I went back into therapy because I'm just not coping well anymore. Every day is "I literally can't." Like, this is me for the past several months.



Over the past few months I didn't think I was making much progress and almost stopped going a few times. Apparently my therapist has been noticing progress, though, and I've achieved some of my short-term goals. I might be expecting more out of therapy than is realistic, or expecting too much to happen too fast.

Thanks for your reply. I think I show some npd tendencies as well but some of them don't apply. I'm going to avoid diagnosing myself I think. Surrendering was never my strong suit, but I'll have to if I want to make Headway.

What were the criteria of the made you eligible for a reduced price? I'm currently attending a technical school and I've reached out to their counseling but it's a few weeks away. I suspect they can direct me to the right place. In the meantime I'll work on my sobriety and physical health and try to develop some better interpersonal relationships. I've been trying but it's hard to learn new behaviors without any direction and I find myself behaving the same way that I always have. It's pretty comfortable.

I'm not big on the hugging and stuff either, I think honestly just having a close relationship with someone that I can trust would fix a lot of my problems but I'm only in the city for another month and a half before I move back to my home City.

I'm going to make a list of characteristics of myself positive and negative to help make my time with the therapist well spent.

Most people have what's generally considered "healthy" levels of "narcissism", so people can often see a glimmer of themselves in the NPD diagnostic criteria, especially if they have a few traits that go above and beyond what society considers normal and appropriate. Actual full-blown personality disorders are, as far as I know, kind of rare.

Criteria for reduced price was income. The sheet only wanted our combined income. I was surprised to see that it was lower, and I think that if you're below X threshold they basically just waive the copay and get whatever insurance will pay.

I've been in and out of therapy for a decade, I find it's well worth it. Find a therapist you get along with and stick with it.

Awesome, thanks. I'll update the thread when relevant. I wish you the best.

I would suggest that children with RAD grow up to be adults with RAD, it doesn't just disappear when you get to a certain age. I think most articles are about children because it wasn't known about when we were young.
As for diagnosis's, my personal view is that early life trauma gives you a lot of problems, each that can have its own name, many that overlap, I probably could have just easily obtained a diagnosis of Aspergers, bar for the road I traveled on to get here.